The day after the
Bill Nye- Ken Ham debate [1] was a lively one online for extremists in both camps. Scientists shook hands, patted each others' (virtual) backs, and congratulated each other on the clearly superior position of science. Young Earth Creationists (YEC's, the people that believe the Bible as interpreted literally) too, held hands and praised the power of God to act through the voice of Ken Ham against the "secular humanist" view of Nye.
All of the people
I personally know came away from watching that debate (mostly live) saying that Nye had stomped all over Ham. "Ham had no answers, no evidence, no proof," went the chorus. And online blogs largely followed suit. American Atheists, Inc. took only hours to release this "
summary" [2] of the debate which excerpted from the Q&A section at the end.
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| Click link above for full image. Source: American Atheists, Inc. |
Buzzfeed, too, released a
listcicle* shaming creationists' reactions to the debate. While not representative of the population at large, it is meant to suggest YEC's inability to grasp reality and evidence. Its voice is tailored to say that YEC's are simpletons that won't change their minds because it is incompatible with their faith. A follow up to that article showing doctored (sarcastic) translations of those questions can be found on the web.
But there are a few writers that were unsure if Nye's goals were even compatible with the horse and pony show that Ham was setting up. Nye was in the lions' den, since the debate actually took place in the auditorium of the Creationist Museum.
Sean McElwee and Abigail Salvatore of
Huffington Post [4] write, "The solution is not anti-theism but better theological and scientific awareness...The irony of debates like the one between Bill Nye and Ken Ham is that they pit two fundamentalist readers against each other."
Some
writers supposed [5, 6] that Nye meeting Ham as an "equal"
gave undue authority [7] to the YEC viewpoint against that of science. Each man came to the debate with a main point to make.
Analysis after the debate doesn't exactly show a thoughtful discussion about the differences between each philosophy. Name-calling and hyperpolarization are replete within each side. YEC's claim a moral superiority while "the humanists/atheists/rationalists/etc." claim a realistic or logical victory.
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| Ham contends that Nye's "Naturalism" will undermine all that religion stands for. |
But this debate is a flash in the pan. At the end of the day it is unlikely that any YEC was impressed by evidence to leave faith behind and I have heard no stories about anyone deciding that YEC worldviews make more sense to them than factual evidence.
This is, however an interesting illustration about something else that parallels in chemistry today. Companies over the years are responding to public pressure- generated by marketing companies- to remove "chemicals" from their products. Chemists are famous for their long-standing and typical approach to this situation of a)mutual back-scratching and asking "Why does the public believe all this nonsense?" and b) trying to "educate" the public through dry and emotionless fact-based lecturing. This isn't limited to chemists, of course.
When Ham asked Nye to provide evidence for his assertions- Nye was obviously prepared for it. He presented evidence in droves. Much of the message of
why it all matters was lost in the sheer volume of the science given, and it was all given at a high enough level that unless you're fairly proficient at science the "so simple a child can understand" points asserted by Ham gain traction. His "
historical vs observational science" [debunked in 8] point is a perfect example of all this. It's a subtle trick that doesn't hold water under scrutiny.
How does this relate to the battle over chemophobia? It's all a matter of attention fatigue. When we don't specialize in an area of study we can easily be fool into thinking that the simplest explanations are the most reasonable. A blogger that calls herself "Food Babe"* recently took on Subway because she asserts a chemical in their bread (azodicarbonamide) should not be there. Since the chemical is also used in the production of "yoga mats and running shoes" she fearmongered until the company gave way. Battling chemophobia in the ways I mentioned above has historically been mostly ineffective. Recently a
post [9] about what other chemicals Food Babe should ban "because they're used in plastics" made it onto
reddit.com [10] but a
comment in the thread points out "Of course none of this will be heard outside the chemist's community..." [11]
We need a new tactic. Science communication is a
vicious battle. It has become clear that fighting fire with water is ineffective. We, as the scientific community need to start fighting fire with fire. Flashy marketing in the modern age will not yield to dispassionate facts. It may be time to put our money where our mouth is and counter those who would spread misinformation with marketing strategies of our own. I know that I won't win everybody over to my line of thought overnight. I don't care. We are losing ground on a slippery slope but the fight isn't over yet. The enemy predicts how we act and plans for that. Changing that pattern could turn the tide, and we could really learn something in the process.
We need to sell ourselves better. We're trained to believe that facts will stand for themselves in the wild, but it simply isn't true. Marketing needs to become a part of our new strategy.
Antoine Lavoisier once said noted, "As ideas are preserved and communicated by means of words, it necessarily follows that we cannot improve the language of any science, without at the same time improving the science itself; neither can we, on the other hand, improve a science without improving the language or nomenclature which belongs to it." [12]
If we improve the way we talk about science, we can improve the science along with it.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI
[2] http://i.imgur.com/T7Zz0R2.jpg
[3] http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/messages-from-creationists-to-people-who-believe-in-evolutio
[4] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sean-mcelwee/bill-nye-ken-ham-debate_b_4723766.html?utm_hp_ref=religion&ir=Religion
[5] http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0205/Bill-Nye-versus-Ken-Ham-Who-won-video
[6] http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2014/01/02/i-think-bill-nye-is-great-but-i-think-hes-making-a-mistake/
[7] http://www.richarddawkins.net/foundation_articles/2014/1/16/why-bill-nye-shouldn-t-debate-ken-ham
[8] http://ncse.com/creationism/analysis/historical-science-vs-experimental-science
[9] http://www.rheothing.com/2014/02/what-else-do-we-need-to-ban-besides.html
[10] http://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/1xm6yb/a_partial_list_of_other_chemicals_used_in_both/
[11] http://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/1xm6yb/a_partial_list_of_other_chemicals_used_in_both/cfcu01n
[12] http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v1/n5/full/nchem.302.html
*Yes, that's right. I'll link to a Buzzfeed article over her drivel. That's how bad it is. Normally I feel free to link to others' work that I reference but what she presents is so repulsive and toxic that I simply refuse to feed her click-through rate.
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| From http://urbanchristiannews.com/ucn/ken-ham-vs-bill-nye-DEBATE.jpg |
